


like a five pound note

by redbatman



Series: season 12 [7]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Are Bad Fathers Not The True Villain Of Supernatural? Discuss, Castiel Can Hear Longing, Character Study, Coda, Coming Out, Crying, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s12e12 Stuck In The Middle (With You), First Kiss, Getting Together, Internalized Homophobia, Lesbian Mary Winchester, M/M, POV Mary Winchester, POV Outsider, Past Abuse, Post-Episode: s12e12 Stuck In The Middle (With You)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-27
Updated: 2017-02-27
Packaged: 2018-09-27 08:58:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9993011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbatman/pseuds/redbatman
Summary: Angels are watching over you.It’s dark outside, but she can see the stars. Castiel, angel of God, is kissing her son.They’re leaned up against the Impala, Dean’s back to the door. He has Dean’s face cradled reverently in his hands, and Dean is crying. Dean has his arms wrapped around Castiel’s shoulders, underneath his arms, as if he’s trying to pull him in as close as possible. He’s rubbing his thumbs distractedly against Castiel’s neck, while Castiel runs his hands all over his face, occasionally wiping away tears that trail down his cheeks. They pull apart and breathe in and she sees, rather than hears, Dean sigh soul-achingly deep. Castiel strokes his thumbs gently underneath Dean’s eyes where tear stains have gathered. Dean laughs, the sound watery, and they press their foreheads together. He turns his face inward, his eyelashes brushing Castiel’s cheek. His arms cling tighter and Castiel rubs the tip of his nose gently against the side of Dean’s.





	

**Author's Note:**

> hello! well so much for writing a cheerful fic but i am back with more content about internalized homophobia and trauma which may be emotionally harrowing but hopefully ultimately fulfilling and uplifting???? the title is from the poem "what they did yesterday afternoon" by warsan shire

Sam says that Dean’s out with the car, so Mary goes to find him. She wants to talk, about tonight, about what happened. She wants to know if he’s okay.

Castiel loves her son.

All of their lives seem to be balancing on the edge of a knife these days and she’s more startled by the fact that it doesn’t seem to faze her than she is startled by the idea of death. She’s been dead for a long time. Still, she can’t shake the dull thumping beat of her heart that continues to ask _Is it always like this?_ There’s grief deep in her bones when she thinks of how _inevitable_ it all seemed.

Sometimes, she gets hit with waves of sadness that make her dizzy and give her goosebumps. She’ll never not be ultimately glad that she’s alive, but there’s grief embedded inside her stomach like a knotted root when she thinks of the decades she missed. When Dean was young, he was always growing, growing so fast. She remembers being so terrified of missing things, missing milestones and first moments, that sometimes at night she would lie awake, her heart beating in her throat, too full of love and fear to move or speak. She would think about him growing up and find herself sobbing, inconsolable.

When you have created a child, you have created a _person_ , and she was never more aware of the complexity and fragility of humanity than when she was watching her eldest son. She remembers with excruciating clarity the first time Dean held Sam in his soft little boy arms. The moment when he looked up at her face, wide-eyed baby tooth smile and eyes full of wonder, and asked if he could hold the baby, she felt like her heart was being squeezed in a fist. She whispered, _yes, honey, of course,_ feeling close to tears of joy and inexplicable sorrow.

The worst part though, was after she had carefully helped him arrange his little brother in his arms, ( _make sure you support his back and his head, sweetheart, babies are just small and it takes them a while to get strong like you_ ) when he looked down at Sam and she saw his entire world change. The evidence that he was now an older brother was in his hands. He would be shaped by this for the rest of his life.

She remembers how he got overwhelmed, his green eyes welling up with tears. She didn’t ask him why or tell him he didn’t have to cry, she knew that he just loved his brother, so much. Mary took them to bed and held them both close, softly gentling and petting Dean’s feathery baby hair. _Oh, I know angel, I know. Me too, me too._

She wishes she could somehow make it so he could remember that day more vividly than the image of her burning on the ceiling of his little brother’s nursery.

It’s hard to reconcile her past with her present. On the surface, Dean is nothing like the sensitive little boy who craved affection, who loved to draw and play dress up and couldn’t go to sleep at night without being tucked in. She knows he’s a man now, who’s seen and done things most people couldn’t fathom, much less handle. She should be proud, so proud, that her boy is so strong. Instead, she’s sad.

She is proud of him, she is, it’s just that-she never wanted this for him. His life wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Sam’s life wasn’t supposed to happen like this. Mary can only guess the way Dean has stretched himself thin over the years they had to live without her. The things they’ve told her, that Castiel has told her, the journals she’s read, have made her realize the extent to which Dean tried to force himself to fill every missing role in Sam’s life. He stretched himself desperately to try and be parent, brother and best friend all at once. Now that he and Sam were both adults she didn’t know if he knew how to stop stretching, that he didn’t need to anymore. She didn’t know if he would ever or could ever fully realize that he shouldn’t have had to. It never should have been his responsibility.

Dean forced himself to be a man because he perceived there to be a shortage, but he should’ve been able to be a boy. She thinks she can see those parts of him sometimes still, the child he locked away so long ago and never really got to be.

_Angels are watching over you._

It’s dark outside, but she can see the stars. Castiel, angel of God, is kissing her son.

They’re leaned up against the Impala, Dean’s back to the door. He has Dean’s face cradled reverently in his hands, and Dean is crying. Dean has his arms wrapped around Castiel’s shoulders, underneath his arms, as if he’s trying to pull him in as close as possible. He’s rubbing his thumbs distractedly against Castiel’s neck, while Castiel runs his hands all over his face, occasionally wiping away tears that trail down his cheeks. They pull apart and breathe in and she sees, rather than hears, Dean sigh soul-achingly deep. Castiel strokes his thumbs gently underneath Dean’s eyes where tear stains have gathered. Dean laughs, the sound watery, and they press their foreheads together. He turns his face inward, his eyelashes brushing Castiel’s cheek. His arms cling tighter and Castiel rubs the tip of his nose gently against the side of Dean’s.

She shouldn’t be seeing this, it’s their private moment. Though she’s only known him for a short time, she can’t imagine her son letting anyone else but Castiel see him this vulnerable. Mary feels like she’s trespassing, committing some sort of crime.

As she goes to quietly return back inside, she sees Dean’s eyes snap in her direction. _Oh fuck._ She stutters an apology and shuts the door.

She’s standing in the hall with her face in her hands when he follows her inside.

“I’m sorry mom,” his voice is so soft, small, she can’t help but remember all the times he feared punishment as a child. It’s hard to make herself understand that he’s not a little boy anymore when in so many ways, in those few moments he’s been vulnerable in front of her, she feels like they’re still all together in Lawrence. He still desperately wants to be _good_ , wants to do things the _right way_ . She never had enough time to convince him he was her perfect boy. She feels cold.

“Oh Dean,” she wants to say _sweetheart,_ she wants to say _honey,_ but she doesn’t know how he’ll react, if she’ll make him close off. “There’s nothing to be sorry for.”

He’s staring at her and her bones ache with sympathetic tension from the way he’s holding himself wound tight in anticipation. It’s a stance ready to absorb a blow, she imagines he’s always prepared for any kind.

“Where’s Castiel?” she asks, endeavouring to keep her voice cheerful. She wants to cry, but she knows he would think that it was about him, that him loving and being in love is something that makes her sad. She’s hurt because he’s hurt, she’s scarred by everything that scarred him. Mary can’t show her son how much she aches for him, it would only add to his pain. His pain is not about her, especially because he lost her so long ago, but that almost makes it worse. She wasn’t there. She wasn’t there.

Dean’s eyes are red-rimmed and sore looking, and the colour high in his cheeks makes his freckles stand out, makes him look younger. “He’s outside still,” his eyes flick everywhere on her face except her eyes. “He likes looking at the stars. Um. And I-uh, I told him I needed to talk to you by myself.”

Her heart beats rapidly in her chest and she’s suddenly so _angry._ She knows it’s irrational, knows it’s more complicated, but she wants a list of _names._ She wants to know exactly who and when and what people said and did to Dean Winchester to make him so beat up inside.

She wants to kill them.

“How long have you two been together?” she asks.

“We’re not-I mean, I don’t know, maybe we are, now, I-” he’s talking fast and cuts himself off self-consciously, trailing off and cracking his knuckles.

“That was your first kiss?” Mary tries to put just enough _ooh you like him_ intrigue into her voice to lighten the mood. “Well, then I’m extra sorry I interrupted.”

Dean actually smiles a bit, a tiny closed mouth twitch of the lips, but still. “Mo-om,” he draws the word into two whiny syllables, but the tension is still in his voice.

She doesn’t know what to say.

“So Casti-” she goes to say, just as Dean starts to speak again _Mom, I-_ . She stops. “You go first.”

He’s making eye contact with her chin. “You’re not disappointed?”

 _Oh baby, oh darling._ “No. No-never,” her voice is watery and she blinks rapidly. “Let’s go sit, okay? Let’s go sit.”

They go quietly. Dean sits in silence for a minute. “Dad wouldn’t be okay with this,” his face is flushed with embarrassment and the exertion of holding back tears. “He-” there he stops talking. Chokes. Gulps.

Mary’s ears are ringing. “I-” she’s overwhelmed by everything that remains unsaid in that one simple confession. “I’m so sorry,” she feels a tear slip down her face.

“Mom, don’t cry,” Dean sounds horrified. “Don’t-it’s okay.”

“I love you,” she says, fiercely, strongly. “I love you.”

His lip wobbles. “I love you too,” his voice is soft and tear-stained.

Mary breathes in, long and deep and shaky. She thinks. She twists her hands together. “Do-do you remember what me and your father were like, when you were little? Um-” her mouth quivers and she coughs deliberately. “I think it’s easy, sometimes easier, to idealize a relationship...to-to idealize a family. And I-God-you know I loved him. But we fought. A lot.”

Dean’s eyes fill with tears again. “Yeah,” his voice is rough. “Yeah. I-” he breathes out. “I remember.”

“I used to-I had girlfriends,” Mary blurts out. “I was young. I’d never even heard the word _lesbian_ in context. I wasn’t-”

“Mom-” Dean starts to speak, his eyes wide, but she presses on. She needs to press on. She’s never talked about this before.

“So I know-you know I get it,” she’s twisting her hands together, her voice soft. “It’s really hard. It’s just hard to-you know, I didn’t even think of myself as-” a long shaky breath. “I thought I could want to be with women, without that changing me-without changing who I thought I was. I could want this and still want-want what my father wanted for me. A husband. Kids. It-it never occurred to me that my life could be about anything else. That _I_ could-could be anything else-”

She takes a minute. Dean lets her. His face is wet.

“I’m so sorry Dean, I’m so-” she shudders. “I spent my whole life wanting to get away from this-from hunting, from my father...that I-I think I forced our family into place because I needed-I wanted so badly for the world to be safe for my children, I never considered that there are other-there are other things to be scared of.”

Dean speaks so quietly. “Do you regret it?”

“No,” she responds so fast. “No. I could never regret you or your brother. Never. I chose you. You’re the one thing in my life that I chose.”

His face breaks and she reaches for him. He lets her hold him close while he cries.

When they break apart, he wipes at his eyes with the heel of his hand and laughs self-consciously.

“You’re so much my son,” Mary shakes her head in wonder. “I really see that. I’m sorry if that’s given you a hard time.”

“That’s all I ever wanted to be,” Dean replies. “Honestly. That’s all I ever wanted.”

* * *

Dean disappears upstairs to talk to Sam and she goes back outside.

Castiel is leaning back against the car, looking up at the sky. He doesn’t acknowledge her approach until she is standing right in front of him. “Hello Mary,” he looks at her and tilts his head. “Is Dean all right?”

“I think he-we’re gonna be okay,” she says and he hums. “I-Castiel, I need you to know that I would never want my son to feel ashamed. Dean or-or Sam.”

He appraises her. “I didn’t think you would. But I’m not always the best judge of human character,” he pauses, and his mouth twitches in humour. “Sam, as far as I can discern, seems to be heterosexual. So you don’t need to worry about that.”

“I wouldn’t-” she cuts herself off. That isn’t what she came to talk about. “Castiel, can I ask you a question?”

His eyes are so blue, tired and ancient looking. “You can try.”

She bites her lip, unsure how to drive at what she wants to know in a way that beats around the bush. So she doesn’t try. “Do you love him?”

He frowns, far away in thought. “I’ve never loved anyone the same,” the lines beneath his eyes look like valleys that are gateways to deep icy oceans. “I’m not sure it’s right to use the same word for what I feel for others compared to what I feel for your son.”

“How long?” she needs to know how he feels, she needs to know what this is to him.

“That’s a more difficult question,” Castiel bunches his hands in the material of his coat. “I think the true, honest answer is always, from the moment I touched him. But that isn’t when I knew. I-for a while I did not know how to understand. Angels govern themselves by forces ulterior to emotion.”

“Like vulcans,” Mary quips.

“Hm,” he smiles at her. “Dean likes that show. I understand Spock’s motivations very much, as an outsider, an alien straddling two opposing worlds. I think when he watches, Dean likes to see himself as James Kirk. He compared us to them once, but Sam told me about the history of transformative content regarding them as a couple, and he never did again.”

“I’ve always felt-angels can sense longing,” he says. “Prayer, in essence, is longing. The power of prayer isn’t the articulation of words, but the emotions and desires within those words. I’ve answered unconscious prayers before-” he senses he’s getting off-track. “I didn’t know. Don’t be mistaken, I couldn’t know, because the longing was so fractured, it was confused and hurt. It-sometimes it was painful, to feel it. I could feel what he felt and it-well, it felt like a scar inside my body. Like an ache buried in my bones, running through my blood.”

He’s looking at the stars again. “In many ways I had accepted the reality of that ache. I was unwilling to let him know what I could feel or push him to explain himself, his desires, to me. It seemed possible that we could do this forever, and I couldn’t risk him closing off from me, or pulling away. It’s always been most important that I can be in his life at all, in any capacity, as close as he will let me be. I was trying to learn to be satisfied with accepting that bruise. Tonight-changed that for me. I thought I could live this way-” he looks at her and sighs.

“But then you were dying,” she finishes for him.

“But then I was dying,” he echoes.

They breathe in the cold night air in silence before he speaks again.

“You know, Mary,” he looks at her. “Dean wants to trust people. Honesty is very important to him,” he frowns. “He’s been hurt before by those, me included, who were doing what they thought was right, was for the greater good, but ultimately chose to conceal it from him. There’s some element of hypocrisy there, occasionally, because he has not always shared the truth himself, and has made reckless decisions without thought of how his loved ones would feel if he put himself in harm’s way,” he says. “But he puts family above everything. He needs you to trust him back.”

“Okay,” Mary says. She sighs deeply. “Okay, Castiel.”

She looks at the sky. “So you’re an angel. When were you made?”

He hums. “Before time, if you can parse the paradox of qualifying timeless space as having a ‘before’ or ‘after’. But the stars existed, then.”

She thinks about that. “Do you want to go inside?” she asks.

* * *

Dean is huddled on the couch with a beer. He smiles at them when they walk in. “Sam’s gone to bed,” he says. “I should be asleep too, it’s so damn late.”

Castiel sits next to him, their legs pressed together. He reaches for Dean’s hand and holds it with his own, scrutinizing his expression for his reaction. Dean moves their hands onto his knee and Castiel smiles, lacing their fingers together.

Dean laughs briefly. “Damn, all that crap gave me a headache,” he stretches and Castiel wraps his free arm protectively around him.

“I’ll go get you some water,” Mary says.

When she returns, she lingers outside, watching them together. They speak softly to each other and Dean wrinkles his nose, smiling. Castiel reverently encloses Dean’s hand in his own and brings it up to his face, brushing his knuckles with his mouth.

All of them belong here.

**Author's Note:**

> wow thanks for reading dudes. i think a lot about the parallels between mary and dean as people and as narratives. i took a while to write this bc i knew so many people were writing codas and i wanted to take my time and write something i cared about a lot, and i think i care a lot about this. 
> 
> as per Usual, i am killvvmaims on tumblr so Hey


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